I couldn't have said it better.
I got a bit excited and should add more detail: we're in a time when taxes are being shifted more and more away from those who have (rich & corporations) to those who have not. A public/private partnership seems insane to people because it is. The private companies have all the resources and need to leverage further their wealth from the public sector. They can easily front this by themselves and still be printing money without a care in the world. Didn't the corporate tax rate in the USA just get reduced from 35% to 21%? Private top-tier income tax was something like 96% during WWII and now it's down to what, half of that? So not only do you blatantly and overtly go out of your way to avoid contributing to the public fund but then also get politicians to give you deals and project-specific loans out of that exact same reduced, exhausted public purse? OOkay. Then you tell us that we should be thanking you because you're providing jobs... what kind of jobs and to whom?
I'm always skeptical of these things to say the least. Then to claim that there's proof... umm.... are you referencing Atlas Shrugged?
Actually the exact opposite is happening. The top quintile is pay a bigger share of taxes than before.[1] In 1960, the top quintile paid 56.5% of all federal tax revenue. In 2005 it was 69%.
Care to revise your position based on that?
[1]http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29861648/ns/politics-capitol_hill/... (table on right)
You're mistaken and given your responses elsewhere I think you're either confused or arguing in bad faith.
The mean tax rate paid by the top 0.1% of earners in 1979 was just over 40%. This fell to about 25% in 2010.[1] Marginal rates followed a similar trend. Meanwhile the US Gini coefficient rose from .415 in 1979 to .476 in 2012.[2] This implies that the top quintile pays a greater share of Federal taxes because they're proportionally richer than the other quintiles. The poor don't pay much Federal tax because you can't get blood from a stone.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/r42729_0917..., page 3
[2] https://www.citylab.com/life/2014/05/mapping-three-decades-i...
[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
How should I interpret that chart, considering things like wealth versus income? There's some sort of transition between those -- I would guess more wealth was held in non-taxed trusts or investments back then, compared to now? Does the estate tax change behavior?
I think the point is to look at how much of the government is paid for by the top quintile than the others, over time, compared to each group's wealth. Is that correct?
(I am not an economist, just have an amateur interest in complex systems.)
